


Cyanide

by scioscribe



Category: The Punisher (TV 2017)
Genre: Love/Hate, M/M, Pre-Canon, Rough Kissing, Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-30
Updated: 2018-01-30
Packaged: 2019-03-11 13:19:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,273
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13525122
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scioscribe/pseuds/scioscribe
Summary: Billy tries to warn Frank.  Sort of.





	Cyanide

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Edonohana](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Edonohana/gifts).



> These two were not destined for an especially sweet Valentine, so I hope you like dark chocolate. Your prompts were so hard to choose between!

Afghanistan.  A dark purple bruise on the underside of Frank’s chin from a sparring match that’d gotten just a little out of hand, the way the everything seems to lately.  At least everything Billy takes on himself.  Fuck, these days he’s nothing but raw adrenaline, electricity, and shaking hands.

That’s what starts it off.  His hands are too jumpy to tear open the beverage pouch, so Frank does it for him, pours the powder into the water and stirs it conscientiously, like the dad he is, the schmuck husband who makes Kool-Aid for the kids at barbecues.  If he even had a hunch what Billy got up to, he would never look at him the same way again.  He sure as shit wouldn’t mother hen him this way.  Big brother Frankie.  Billy’s the only one who calls him Frankie and Frank’s the only one who calls Billy Bill.  Go figure.

“Pink lemonade’s a hell of a choice,” Frank says, handing it back to him.

Billy gets himself to hold the cup steady.  “Only other one we got’s fruit punch.  You ever tasted that shit, Frankie?”

Frank has, so he says, with playful urgency, “On second thought, I’m the one who got that open for you, I’ll go ahead and drink it myself.”

Billy snatches his hand back, sloshing some of the lemonade on himself but protecting the rest of it.  “You don’t check the supplies first, that’s on you.”  He drinks.  It’s lukewarm.  Everything in Afghanistan is the wrong temperature.

Well, it’s not the country’s fault, maybe.  Nothing can help being where it is.  Take him, for example.  He’s not a bad guy.  Put him in the right family from the get-go, with money enough that he didn’t have to hustle for every cent, every scrap of respect, every little bit of pretty, and he wouldn’t be here, doing this.  The great good fight or whatever they want to call it, none of it means anything to Billy but a means to an end.  And the end, he thinks, tasting the grainy lemonade on his tongue, will be glorious.

He’s aware that glorious is a word only psychos use.  Maybe that’s why his hands are so fucked-up.

But what’s wrong with glory?  What, is he supposed to want what Frank has?  Smart as Billy is, ruthless as he is, skilled as he is, ambitious as he is, he’s supposed to settle for _Frank Castle_ ’s life?  That’s absolutely what Frank thinks, showing off suburbia like he’s Ozymandias: _look upon my works, ye mighty, and despair_.  Like the highest Billy should try to climb is a boxy little house, a mortgage, a fucking above-ground pool in the backyard.  Homecoming traditions of carousel rides and cotton candy and the kids clambering into bed.  Making homemade waffles on Mother’s Day.  _Fuck_ that.

Billy wants a life the gloss won’t ever peel off of, a life that won’t ever lose its shine.

“Hey,” Frank says, his hand suddenly on Billy’s shoulder.  “You need to talk about something?”

Yeah.  No.

Billy spent the morning shoving balloons of high-grade heroin into the belly of a guy whose name is on the tip of his tongue.  Freckles on his elbows but nowhere else.

“Bill?”

Billy hates him.  “Shut up,” he says, in one long hiss, the words maybe not even distinct.  He turns and presses himself forward, almost screws his mouth down against Frank’s, hard and inarguable.

His lips are rigid and Frank’s are chapped.  Frankie tastes like toothpaste, like mouthwash, like he stood outside the barracks and freshened up because he knew Billy’d had this on his mind for weeks now, or maybe even since they’d first met.  He tugs at Frank’s shirt, battered camo coming up and then ribbed cotton fitting against his palms, Frank’s stomach hard and heaving underneath.  Right here is where they would make the cut, where Billy’s hand would slip home, would let go, tumbling the goods where they belonged.  Frankie is walking, talking future transport, the Cadillac of drug mules, and Billy laughs against his mouth.

 _Why don’t you quit_ , Billy thinks.  He bites Frank’s lower lip and feels blood spring against his tongue.  _Why don’t you take a bullet, you piece of shit, you fucking piece of shit, why don’t you just give me a break already?_

He’s not sure if it’s the bite that does it or not, but Frankie draws back then.  Billy looks with a kind of nauseated satisfaction at the red smear on Frank’s mouth, which goes just fine with the bruise along his jaw.  Nobody touches Frank, who goes through life like a bull in a china shop.  Nobody ever leaves a mark on him except for Billy himself.

“Bill,” Frank says.  He wipes his mouth and shoves his hand up through the short buzz of his hair.  Even now, his hands are steady.  “Bill—you know.”

“Yeah.  What do I know, Frankie?  Maybe you should tell me.”

“You’re like a brother to me,” Frank says, and there’s a raw note of yearning in his voice.  He thinks that this is the last, best blow to land of all, that he’s finally given Frank something to want that’s incompatible with his apple-pie home life.  “My kids call you their uncle.  Maria—you know how much I love her, Bill.”

He ignores that last part.  Love, who gives a shit?  Instead, he smirks, full asshole, vicious.  “Sure.  I can see how much you think about me like I’m your brother.”  He doesn’t even have to lower his eyes to make the point.  Frank’s not stupid, whatever people think.

Frank actually blushes, carnation pink, and Billy thinks, _You’re so pretty_.  He can never think that word without wanting to own whatever it is the word’s pointing at: that’s how people always used it with him, after all.

There’s a lagging second where he knows that if he pressed it further now, he could break their friendship for good.  If he leaned into the question of Maria, Frank would get up and walk out and maybe never say another word more to Billy than he had to, or maybe he would finally catch a flight back home.  He has strings, he could pull them.  Orange hates him anyway, hates the way Frank looks at him with undisguised contempt, like any guy faux-ballsy enough to get himself dubbed Agent Orange is nothing more than dogshit on his rug.  So here is Billy’s solution, if he wants it.  He could end it right here and never have to worry again.

But he would have to see Frank’s face.

Here’s what Billy Russo thinks about love, in the end: Frank is all he’s ever had of it.

He would burn down the whole world, Frank included, before he put himself in a position to watch Frank get disgusted with him.

So instead, Billy tucks all the hate and all the envy away unsaid in the back of his mouth, a cyanide tooth waiting to be shattered when there’s no other way forward.  He can live with the bitter taste of knowing it’s there.  He’s lived with worse.  Part of him wonders if Frank can taste it too, if whatever’s between them is so strong, no matter how fucked-up, that what’s on his tongue is on Frank’s.  Right now: Frank’s blood.  Right now, that’s true.

He says, “I’m sorry,” which is a lie, and, “You know I never want to do anything to mess you up, mess up what you have,” which is not a lie, because it’s true that Frank knows that.  Whether he’s wrong or not is more of an open question.


End file.
